


In the Woods Somewhere

by pineapplecrushface



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Afterlife, Canonical Character Death, Death Bureaucracy, Dream Sex, Frottage, M/M, Resurrection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-21
Updated: 2019-04-21
Packaged: 2020-01-23 08:38:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18546205
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pineapplecrushface/pseuds/pineapplecrushface
Summary: Quentin has a list of chores, listens to some Queen, and adjusts a bar graph.Or: Alice being unable to wipe younger Quentin's memory during the timeshare spell had a ripple effect.





	In the Woods Somewhere

Being dead, Quentin had to admit, was really kind of great. He was glad he hadn’t known the deal when he was younger, although from what Alice had told him, there was no guarantee that he’d have ended up in this exact place if he’d died at any other time or situation. He was lucky he’d found himself here, especially with Alice to show him the ropes.

“You’re really you, right?” he asked when he got off the train and she was waiting for him. “Like, you’re not a projection of you that I’m making up to comfort myself through eternity, right?”

She gave him a faint smile. “No, I’m really me. A little different from the last time you saw me, though. That Alice is kind of like a branch of me.”

She wasn’t the only one at the station—there was his father, a young woman with a much older Eliot and a much older Quentin, and another old man who looked a little like him. Quentin was startled to realize who he was even as he hugged him and the man was suddenly much younger. “Teddy,” he said with a puzzled laugh. “I can’t believe I…”

“It’s all right. You’ve never really met me,” Teddy said, holding his shoulders and giving Quentin a careful once over. “You’re so young. I wondered what you would be like.”

“He’s almost exactly like I remember him. Same clothes, even. But look at that hair,” the young woman with the long reddish-gold braid said, pushing his bangs out of his eyes. Even as he squinted at her, confused, his mind supplied her name.

“Arielle,” he said. She hugged him and he patted her on the back uncomfortably, and then the older Quentin and older Eliot surrounded them both and he was squeezed in tight between the three of them. When they pulled away, Eliot stroked the side of his face, looking so much sadder than the others that Quentin found himself choking up.

“You’re just a baby,” Eliot said, flickering in a second from the white-haired old man who lingered somewhere in Quentin’s faded memories to the Eliot he knew better. “I was hoping you’d be an old, old man when I saw you again.”

He blinked hard, wiping his eyes, and said, “I don’t think that was ever going to happen.”

Eliot gave him a narrow look that he forgot about as soon as his father pulled him away and through a door that led directly into the Physical Cottage. He spent a while there with him and Teddy and the older Quentin—he wasn’t sure exactly how long, or how time worked here. Or how anything worked, really. The only thing he knew was that he felt…good. No, not good, wonderful. It wasn’t just that all the things that had hurt him in life were gone, although they were, but that there was some kind of connection now between himself and everything around him that was heightened into a constant low-grade pleasure and wonder.

“Is it like that for everyone?” he asked Alice.

“Yes,” she said. “And it only gets stronger over time. It feels good to exist.”

He had always pinballed all over the place when it came to what he thought might happen after he died. There was the certainty and terrible fear that there was really nothing, and that he would simply wink out, unremembered, or the even more terrible fear that what came afterward was just more of the same, an eternity of being Quentin Coldwater in Quentin Coldwater’s brain. He had wondered if it might be beautiful, but after about the age of eight he dismissed that as a pipe dream. Nothing ever ended up being really beautiful. For the most part, he had sort of envisioned heaven, or whatever, if it even existed, as a place where he could do whatever he wanted forever. He could spend a century reading unpublished drafts from his favorite authors, or playing every version of Kingdom Hearts, or just having sex. Teenage Quentin was very into that idea.

The reality of it wasn’t that far off base. He could do any of those things, if he wanted to, but there were also missions he was meant to fulfill. There was no urgency to the missions. He would do them when it was the right time, in the right way, but nonetheless, it was not the eternal party he had sort of been hoping for.

“The thing is,” he told Alice, “I was hoping to just hang out in the early first millennium for a while.”

“You want to see Merlin, don’t you?” Alice asked.

“Yes,” he said. “Yes, I do.”

“Well, you might be disappointed. There aren’t actually any giants,” she said.

“Are there sword fights?”

“Oh my god, yes. So many fucking sword fights,” she sighed.

“Well.” He waved his hand. “Obviously I want to be there, then. But I keep getting distracted by other stuff.”

They were sitting on a cloud, because he had told her he wanted to do it for a while just to see what it was like. It was very cold and somewhat damp, and he hadn’t figured out how to make himself impervious to that yet.

“Yeah, there’s a lot of observation and dream work,” Alice said.

“Wait,” he said. “Did you go into my dreams?”

She nodded. “Even sometimes when I didn’t have to. It was just…there was a long time where you really needed it.”

He didn’t know whether he liked the idea of that or not, but he couldn’t remember any specific Alice dreams anyway, so it seemed like whatever she had done, it hadn’t bothered him too much.

“I kind of just thought after I died I’d have a lot more choices. More autonomy, or whatever,” he said. “Like, obviously I can bend a lot of things to my will now, but there’s still a list of chores I have to do.”

“It’s that ineffable thing,” Eliot said. He showed up once in a while to talk to Quentin, usually when he was feeling confused about timelines. _There are 39 other versions of me around, right? Why didn’t they greet me when I got here?_ he had asked Eliot. _There are a lot more versions of you than that_ , Eliot said, _but we showed up because we’re part of your timeline. You could see the others if you wanted._

He did want to, but not just yet. Not for a long time, maybe.

“Ineffable.” Quentin scowled at him, and Eliot laughed. He seemed to have settled on somewhere around middle age, with a little bit of gray in his hair, dressed in comfortable Fillory clothes. Quentin liked the way he looked at this particular age, from this particular timeline—there was always something about him that had drawn Quentin’s eye, but the dramatic mask was softened. He was looser, gentler, and didn’t feel the need to deflect his intelligence, or his affection for Quentin. That part Quentin kind of liked, but it embarrassed him, especially when Alice was there to see Eliot pull him close and kiss the top of his head as casually as if he were the other Quentin. She didn’t seem bothered by it; she and Eliot had actually high-fived when Eliot teased him about his tendency to fall asleep within exactly thirty seconds of orgasm. _I call it the Quentin Coldwater Come Countdown_ , Eliot said, and Quentin stalked off and didn’t talk to either of them for however the hell long it took to watch the entire JFK assassination.

*

They kept sending him to roam around with Eliot on earth. He wasn’t sure who They were, exactly, although he’d met a representative of Them. Her name was Nancy and she was a short round British woman who dressed like the Queen, in lots of monochrome dresses and pumps and gloves. She never looked up at him, but had a stack of gold plates on her left side that she stamped and set on her right side as she spoke.

“Hello, my darling,” she always sang whenever he’d been pulled out of whatever he was doing—a conversation with Alice, a ride on a horse where he did not fall off in any way—and given an assignment of some kind.

“How come you’re always the one who’s stuck at the desk?” he asked. “Do you get time off?”

“He thinks I’m human,” Nancy called out to someone behind her that Quentin couldn’t see. As far as he could tell, she was sitting alone at a small wooden rolltop desk in the middle of what he could only call a parlor. “Isn’t that sweet? Oh, darling, no. No, I don’t get time off, and I’m not stuck here. This is my place. Here, off you go.”

So he was sent by Them to observe Eliot, more or less constantly. Not that he was complaining—he found out all sorts of things that way. He wouldn’t have necessarily chosen to follow Eliot around, though. Maybe Alice, or Julia—though he was a little angry with Julia and he couldn’t quite figure out why—or Nadia, the girl who had cheated on him with his roommate during his sophomore year of college. He wouldn’t have minded seeing whether her life was terrible now. But Nancy just kept saying, “We know how you feel about him,” and suddenly there he would be, following Eliot.

It was just…Eliot was so fucking sad, and Quentin didn’t actually know how he felt about that, or about Eliot in general. Confused, he definitely felt confused, and sad, and responsible, and vaguely guilty. Most of the time he had the sense that he barely knew Eliot, if he had to be honest, though he knew that wasn’t true. He had to try very hard to remember individual things they had done together. Some things were perfectly clear, like the time they’d spent an entire weekend getting stoned and watching a Battlestar Galactica marathon, early in his first year. There were almost no calm Saturdays in Brakebills, and certainly no calm Saturdays with Eliot and Margo, but he’d had a cold and Eliot had slunk in sometime after dawn, eyeliner smudged, hair perfect, and said, “You look like shit.”

“I feel like it,” he had said, and turned down the TV. “My throat hurts.”

He was aware that he sounded pathetic, but there was something about Eliot that made him feel all right being kind of a pathetic baby. Eliot stared at him coolly, then swung his blazer over his shoulder and hung it on one of Quentin’s chairs. “Scoot,” he said, nudging Quentin until he made room for him on the bed.

“I don’t want to get you sick,” he had said, and Eliot turned to him and smiled.

“I’ve been sick for years,” he said. It should have been weird, but Eliot had a knack for making dramatic things sound normal, and it was a sentiment Quentin happened to understand, so he turned up the television and tucked his hands inside his gigantic sweatshirt and stuck his feet under Eliot’s knee to keep warm. At one point, Eliot had gone to his room and come back in his pajamas, bearing screwdrivers and a pile of gummies. The screwdrivers were for vitamin C and the candy, he explained with a little tap to Quentin’s nose, was to calm his own nerves so he wouldn’t kill Quentin for sniffling and wiping his nose on his sleeve. Quentin had fallen asleep with his head on Eliot’s chest and stayed there all the way through the third season. Eliot hadn’t woken him up even though he’d drooled on him and snored, Eliot told him, like a tiny fucking jackhammer.

That memory was so clear Quentin could almost touch it. Most other things about Eliot were as opaque as his childhood memories. He knew, for example, that he was the one who had climbed up on top of the kitchen cabinets at the age of three, fallen off, and broken his wrist. He could even remember doing it, pulling the chairs into the kitchen and then looking down at his own small chubby legs as he climbed, but he couldn’t remember what he’d thought or felt. The Quentin who had done that and the Quentin who had spent a life with Eliot weren’t exactly strangers to him, but he couldn’t really say they were _him_ , either.

He spent a lot of time watching Eliot go about his day and marveling over how different he was now from that younger Eliot, the one he knew best. More than the cane, more than the difficulty walking, there was a heavy, thick air of woundedness around him that made it painful to watch him do anything. The density of it affected even the inanimate objects around him. Everyone in Kady’s penthouse went quieter, softer when he was there.

“I think they think I’m still the Monster,” Eliot told Margo one evening when Quentin was forced into spying on them. They sat in front of the fire, Eliot in one chair and Margo sprawled in the other, her feet hanging over the side with her heels dangling from her toes. Eliot sat perfectly upright, staring into the fire, while Margo toyed with her hair and watched him. She didn’t like to be away from Eliot for even a second, Quentin had noticed, clinging to his arm even when he walked through the apartment.

“No, baby,” she said. “They’re not afraid of you. They’re hurting for you.”

Eliot blew out a little hard breath that somehow managed to be both weary and disbelieving. “For what?” he said. “I’m alive.”

“I know you like to play it close to the vest, El, but everybody kind of figured out you and Q had something going on,” Margo said. “Q practically had it painted on his face.”

Eliot nodded jerkily, then shook his head. “It wasn’t like that,” he said, his voice flat. “We could have—but I fucked it up, Bambi.”

“You couldn’t have fucked it up too badly.” Margo sat up fast and curled around Eliot in his chair. His left hand held onto the cane in a death grip, but he grasped onto her with his right hand, still staring into the fire. “He fought so fucking hard to get you back, Eliot. He loved you until the end. He loved you so fucking much.”

“He did,” Eliot said, and Quentin started. He’d been watching so intently that he’d almost forgotten they were talking about him. “But I, on the other hand…I pulled a me. A first-class, top of the line Eliot Waugh special.”

Margo kissed his hand. “You made him think you didn’t give a shit.”

“Wouldn’t have told him I loved him under torture,” Eliot said with a tight smile. “You know the drill.”

There was a commotion in the kitchen, and they both started and turned toward it. “That’s Josh,” Margo said, satisfied. “Come on, honey, let’s go get something to eat. You’ll feel better.”

“I’ll be out soon,” Eliot said, looking up at her finally. “Let me brood romantically in front of a fire for a while, okay?”

“Of course,” she said, dropping a kiss on his upturned mouth and shutting the door behind her on the way out.

Quentin sat on the floor with his knees drawn up to his chest, watching Eliot and wondering if even a part of him could see Quentin. The truth key was gone, but even if it were still around, he wasn’t a ghost and he wasn’t an astral projection. There was no way Eliot could know he was there. He didn’t even know if he’d want Eliot to see him. It didn’t feel good, knowing Eliot loved him. It felt like an ulcer, like there was a small circle of acidic pain that was eating away at his insides, even if he couldn’t feel it yet.

“Q,” Eliot sighed, and Quentin jumped again. Eliot leaned his head against the back of the chair, eyes closed. “I have no idea where you are, or if you’re even out there anywhere. I wouldn’t blame you if you were off in the Underworld blowing Penny. Actually, I hope you are. You deserve it.”

He shifted around in the chair and grimaced, grabbing his stomach.

“Fuck. Intestinal wounds do not mix well with this aesthetic,” he said, breathing hard. “Anyway, if you’re there somewhere, and not in the middle of sucking eternal dick, I want you to know that I would choose you. I think you’re probably the only one I’d ever choose.”

He panted for a few seconds before he pushed himself up from the chair, leaning so heavily on the cane that it wobbled back and forth. Quentin closed his eyes and then—

He was in his room in the penthouse, on the bed. It was night, and there was someone in the bed with him. He’d been crying, he realized, for who knew how long. It was the kind of crying that left you worn out and useless for days, because Eliot—god, _Eliot_.

He sat up. The lights were off, but he could see everything as if the room itself glowed, which he spent some time wondering over before he took stock. There was his bed, of course, and his favorite blanket, into which he’d just been crying like his entire heart was breaking—and it honestly kind of felt like it was, dead or not—and there was Eliot, draped elegantly beside him. The left side. He had always slept on the left side of the bed, either facing Quentin or wrapped around him.

Quentin shivered. His clothes were still hanging in the closet. He wondered if anyone had washed the sheets or thought about boxing up any of his things. They hadn’t done that with Eliot even when they were certain he was dead, but there was something about having Eliot’s body there that had made it impossible to cleanse the place of his presence.

Eliot stirred. “Hey, don’t cry,” he mumbled, flailing out with one hand. It hit the side of Quentin’s leg and connected, and Quentin froze.

“What the fuck?” he asked. “Can you hear me?”

“Of course I can,” Eliot said. He opened his eyes and then they were both frozen, staring at each other.

“El,” Quentin whispered. “What’s going on?”

“I’m dreaming,” Eliot said, and bolted up. He was shirtless, and pulled the sheets down below his hips to reveal the smooth, unscarred skin of his abdomen. “Yup. Dreaming. Figures.”

“I can talk to you,” Quentin said, touching the blankets. They moved under his hands, and he clenched his fingers in them, breathing hard. “I can touch you. God, Eliot. _Eliot_ —”

He launched himself at Eliot, who caught him and held him, his skin—his skin, so warm and soft under Quentin’s hands, the firm muscle of his back, every bit of him real and solid and wonderful and Eliot. Quentin’s face was pressed into his neck and he rubbed his cheek against it just to feel the bristles of his own beard scratching over the thin, delicate skin, the beat of his heart visible there, alive under Quentin’s touch.

“Okay,” Eliot said in a low, choked voice, pulling him in even tighter and rubbing his back. “I can work with this.”

“Can we stay in here forever?” Quentin asked, and then realized what he’d said. He sat up, wiping his face. “I didn’t mean that.”

Eliot touched his hair, his eyes darting all over like he was trying to take all of Quentin in at once. “I know you didn’t, baby,” he said. “God, look at you.”

His hands hovered around Quentin’s face, fingers so close to his mouth but not touching. “Don’t be afraid,” Quentin whispered, kissing his fingertips, his palm, his wrist, again and again, until Eliot cupped his face, stroking his cheek slowly. Quentin pushed into it, feeling like—well, he’d never felt like it in this life, he thought, this need to put himself entirely in Eliot’s hands, but he knew he had in another life. That life where he had been given this, right here, for as long as he had wanted it.

Eliot slid his hand around to Quentin’s neck and drew him in, kissing him with the long, slow, dragging sweetness that had stuck with him after the first time even through the alcohol and his determination to forget about it. The memory of it, the spreading slow pleasure of Eliot’s mouth on his, had crossed timelines to make him want it like he was starving, like he would crawl across a desert for it. Eliot’s hands stroking his hair, the way he pulled away just a little bit and looked into Quentin’s eyes and then, shivering, kissed him again like he couldn’t stay away—it was beyond every fantasy he’d ever had. And he had fantasized about Eliot a lot.

“Are you completely dedicated to staying in these clothes?” Eliot asked, tugging on the zipper of his hoodie. He’d barely noticed what he was wearing, and realized they were the clothes he had died in.

Shuddering, he shook his head, helping Eliot drag his clothes off. Eliot kissed parts of him as they were uncovered—his shoulder, a little smattering of freckles on his stomach that he particularly liked, the tip of his cock, his kneecap—then swung Quentin under him, pinning his hands above his head and weighting him down at the hips. The heavy pressure against his cock and the sudden beautiful shock of being held down made him go a little wild and he arched up, already on the verge of begging. “Eliot,” he said desperately.

“I know,” Eliot said, his voice thick. “You like that. I remember.”

“Eliot,” he gasped. “El. Please.”

“Please what, Q? What do you want?”

“You know what I want,” he said.

Eliot’s eyes softened. “Yeah?” he asked. “I think I do.”

He let go of one of Quentin’s wrists and brought his hand to his mouth, tracing a thumb over his lips. Quentin could feel himself going hazy already, and then Eliot slipped his first two fingers into his mouth and he started to suck. He could never explain what it was he loved about it, only that the feeling of it—and often just the thought of it—had a direct line to his cock. He moaned around Eliot’s fingers and didn’t even realize he was grinding up against Eliot in small, frantic circles until he was so close he almost couldn’t stop—and then he really couldn’t, sobbing, coming so hard he almost pushed Eliot off of him, but Eliot only removed his fingers and held his wrists down again, surrounding him and holding him through it. After a second, Eliot’s grip tightened and his breath went fast and ragged, and he dropped his head down to gasp into the shelter of Quentin’s neck. It went on and on until he thought he was actually coming again, or maybe a third time, and when it finally slowed and stopped, he was shaking, his face pressed into his bicep.

Eliot released him and rolled onto his back so Quentin could curl up to him, still trembling, and stroked his hair while he rested his forehead on Eliot’s chest and panted.

“Holy shit,” he said eventually.

“Yeah, dream sex has raised expectations for regular sex in an uncomfortable way,” Eliot said.

“Did you come like four times?” he asked.

“Maybe,” Eliot said. “Four or seventeen. Somewhere in there.”

He ran his hand over Eliot’s stomach, ruffling the hair up and then smoothing it back down, resting his palm on the area where there was no scar.

“How much have you been stalking me since you died?” Eliot asked. “Have you seen it? It’s hideous.”

“It’s sexy,” he said. “Everyone knows scars are sexy.”

“Eyebrow scars are sexy, Quentin,” Eliot said. “Bowel reattachment scars are not.”

Quentin kissed his fingers and tapped the spot a few times. “It’s where you came back to me,” he said softly.

Eliot made a little hmm noise that meant he didn’t have an argument, and they were quiet for a while. Quentin let himself be soothed into drowsiness by Eliot’s fingers running through his hair, and thought about the little seed of an idea he’d been going over.

“So,” he said, turning a little bit in Eliot’s arms so he was looking at the ceiling. “Here’s the thing. I may have gone looking for a resurrection spell after Arielle died.”

Eliot twitched and stared at him. “What, in Fillory?”

He bit his lip. “Yes.”

“Jesus, Q.” Eliot took Quentin’s hand and pulled it toward him, flattening it over his heart. “Did you find one?”

“I did,” he said. “I went to Chatwin’s Torrent and took a swim, and when I came out the spell was written out on a scroll by my clothes.”

“That’s…fucked up,” Eliot said.

“Isn’t it?” Quentin rolled over again, his hand still pressed against Eliot’s chest. “She was the one who convinced me not to use it. In a dream. She said if I brought her back she would just get sick over and over again. Then she sat me down and told me, basically, that I needed to get my shit together. I…didn’t. You probably remember that.”

“Well, grief makes us do weird things,” Eliot said. “Look at me. I’m thinking about resurrecting the dead love of my life, but first I’m probably going to dream-fuck him through the mattress for another twelve orgasms. We all have our coping mechanisms.”

“I—yes,” he said, distracted. “Through the mattress?”

“Yes,” Eliot said.

“Okay,” he said breathlessly. “Wait, but I had a point. Obviously I didn’t resurrect her, but I still remember the spell.”

“Really.” Eliot’s hands were on his ass and—honestly, he couldn’t be expected to think about anything else. If Eliot woke up before they got to the spell, he’d just jump into the next night’s dream.

*

“Okay,” Quentin said, pulling off his shirt. “I’m just going to suck it one time and then I’ll teach you the spell, all right?”

“Absolutely,” Eliot said.

*

“Last night was not our fault,” he said, hopping to get out of one shoe and then the other. “We couldn’t have known Josh would blow that thing up.”

“I had to get marmalade off the ceiling,” Eliot said darkly, unzipping Quentin’s pants.

“Like I said, not our fault. Total do-over,” Quentin said.

*

“Margo’s starting to get suspicious,” Eliot said, kissing his way down Quentin’s back.

He started to say, “Oh, yeah?” but Eliot’s fingers slid inside him and instead he hung his head and pushed back onto them.

“I sleep more now than I did when I was in the hospital and knocked out on horse tranquilizers.”

“Well,” he said tightly, and moaned. “If she judges you for dream sex marathons, just tell her you know why the marmalade blew up the other night.”

“Did he—?” Eliot asked.

“Oh yeah,” Quentin said.

“Huh,” Eliot said.

*

The dream room was tidied up the next night. Eliot was a lot more careless with his clothes than Quentin was once they were off his body, but even in his sleep, he was cleaner in general. There were no papers or books piled up, no trash on the floor. “Big boys throw away takeout boxes,” he had told Quentin in their Brakebills days. “We don’t leave them in a stack next to the bed because we don’t want to get up and walk to the trash can.”

Eliot sat on the edge of the bed, fully clothed. “This is different,” Quentin said.

“I just figured it would be harder to get distracted like this,” he said, pulling Quentin to stand between his legs.

“I don’t know.” Quentin ran his fingers over the soft material of Eliot’s shirt. “I get distracted by you whether you’re naked or not.”

“I want to know the spell.” Eliot kissed his stomach and looked up at him. “Not that I regret having soul-awakening sex every night, but I don’t want to live the rest of my life waiting until the next time I can fall asleep.”

“All right, yeah,” he said. “Sorry. I should have done it before. This death thing is weird, El. The only time I feel like myself is when I’m here with you. Everything else feels like a dream.”

He leaned over and smoothed his hand across the blankets, revealing a scroll. Eliot turned to look at it with him, bending to take in the unwieldy script and illuminations.

“There’s a…dog and a weasel fucking,” he said.

“Yeah, apparently that’s a popular one in a lot of ancient Fillorian texts,” Quentin said. “So seven sunrises, seven sunsets.”

At the bottom of the scroll, in sloppy but clear handwriting that looked like Quentin’s, were the words, “For when you really need it.”

“Was that on the scroll when it came out of Chatwin’s Torrent?” Eliot asked.

“Not originally,” he said. “It showed up after I had the dream where Arielle told me not to do it.”

“Do you think this is when we really need it?”

“Well,” Quentin said, “Arielle came to me and said no because she died of natural causes, and I’m coming to you and saying yes because I didn’t. If now isn’t the time, I don’t know what would be.”

Eliot looked down at the scroll again, running his fingers over it. “Mind, body, heart, and soul,” he murmured. “I think I have some ideas.”

“You’ll figure it out,” Quentin said. “Who knows me better than you do?”

“Body, heart, and soul, sure,” Eliot said, touching the side of his face. “Your mind is a mystery to me, Coldwater. I never know what’s going on in there. Little hamsters in wheels.”

Quentin smiled. “Julia would know. She’s pretty good friends with the hamsters.”

“Well,” Eliot said, waving his hand over the scroll so it disappeared, leaving only the blankets, the lights dimming. “Now that we’ve got that out of the way.”

“Oh,” Quentin breathed. “I thought you didn’t want dream sex anymore.”

“Oh my god, no,” Eliot said. “We’re definitely still fucking every night until I see whether this works or not. This spell doesn’t require celibacy, does it?”

Quentin shook his head.

“All right then, get your clothes off and I’ll tie you to the bed. That’s the only reason I even wore these suspenders,” he said.

*

The business of living in the afterlife was much easier than in regular life, but Quentin felt like he made it a lot harder than it need to be. He wanted something that felt permanent, stable, rather than something that shifted with his desires and unspoken thoughts. It felt safer and more real to live somewhere like the Physical Cottage, where he knew every nook and cranny, and not to change anything even though he had always hated the way the bathroom by his room was forever in use, and the kitchen smelled alternately like sulfur and whatever candle Eliot had chosen to burn in there to banish the sulfur smell. Things were inconvenient in real life. You couldn’t just blink and make them better, and even though he had often wished he could do exactly that, now that he could do it, he didn’t want to.

“I don’t understand why you don’t just build your own place,” Alice said, looking around the cottage. “Or make things a little more like you.”

He shrugged. “I guess this is kind of my happy place. I like it the way it is.”

“I always felt claustrophobic in here,” she said.

“So I have a question,” he said. There were drinks in frosted glasses at the bar, and suddenly he wished Eliot were here. His Eliot, the one he remembered best. Eliot always knew what drink would go with a mood. “Do you ever dream now? Or sleep?”

Alice took one of the drinks and sipped, grimacing. She always did that when she drank, even when she liked the taste. She shook her head slowly, forehead furrowed in thought. “No. I hated having to go to sleep, so it was kind of a relief.”

“I always liked sleeping,” he said. “Maybe too much sometimes, but you know. Depression.”

“Did you have a dream?” she asked.

“Yeah, I think so,” he said. “I dreamed I was…with Eliot.”

“Did you go into his dream with him?”

"I did.” His face burned, which he knew was impossible, but some things about him apparently transcended death. “It’s just, I think I was dreaming too. I was different. Like, I had emotions that I don’t have when I’m awake. And I taught him how to do a spell I don’t even know.”

“A spell.” Alice set down her drink.

“Yeah, a resurrection spell.” He put his hands on his hips, suddenly nervous. “I mean, it was a dream, obviously. It wouldn’t work.”

“Well, what was in it?”

He rubbed his forehead. “Let’s see. He had to do it for seven days. At each sunrise and sunset, he would have to create a circle with fire, et cetera, you know the deal. Say the spell, different tutting for each of the cardinal directions, and then at sunset on the seventh day he would have to use items to represent my body, spirit, heart, and mind, and say something absolutely true that he could never say to anyone else.”

“Q, that sounds like a resurrection spell,” Alice said. She stood and walked out the front door of the Physical Cottage and into the living room of her own house. Quentin liked that, kind of—it was very convenient, and the kind of magic he had hoped for and rarely found in Fillory—but he also hated it because he wanted to open the front door of the cottage and find what was always there. He wanted the front lawn. He promised himself that later, he would sit there on a deck chair and have a drink for Eliot and Margo.

Alice’s house was very tall and very white, with long windows that let in the light and bookcases that lined all the walls. Every wall, from the floor to the high ceiling, was covered in shelves, and there were little hand cranks on each one that would open the walls to reveal five layers of other bookcases behind.

She twirled a finger to crank open one of the walls. A book sped past Quentin’s ear and landed in her hand, and she sat down on the fluffy white sofa. A fire lit in the fireplace that appeared under the front two bookcases whenever she felt like it. “What were the words? Do you remember?”

“God, I don’t know,” he said. “Uh, something something commorantus vita. That’s all I remember.”

“A solis ortu usque ad occasum, stet commorantus vita,” she said, reading from the book.

“Yeah, I guess.”

She slammed the book shut. An actual cloud of dust billowed up from it. Was it a real cloud of dust, he wondered, or was it just like that because that was the way Alice wanted it? He opened his mouth to ask, but she was looking at him a little bit like she was Niffin Alice again. “You taught him a resurrection spell, Quentin.”

“Okay?” he said.

“In a dream.”

“Yeah, in a dream. Is that like a bad omen or something?”

“No,” she said. “It’s just something that doesn’t really happen here. As far as I know, we don’t sleep or have dreams, or suddenly learn spells that we’ve never heard of before to teach our ex-boyfriends how to bring us back to life.”

“Ex-boyfriend,” he said, grimacing.

“Really? That’s what you’re focused on?”

“It just doesn’t seem very accurate,” he said.

“Pay attention,” she said. “Some part of you is trying to get yourself resurrected, and you don’t want that, so something is obviously happening here.”

“Right.” He rubbed his hands together. “I guess we can rule out possession.”

“You’re dead. Next.”

“Maybe this is part of one of my assignments,” he said. “To help Eliot get over…me.”

She tilted her head back and forth, considering. “Maybe. That seems convoluted, but maybe.”

“Well, what’s this spell all about, anyway?” he asked. “Like, if Eliot does this, are we talking Pet Sematary? Am I coming back as a zombie? What’s the deal?”

“You won’t be a zombie. If it works, it works, and if it doesn’t, it just won’t,” Alice said, patting the book. The cover read _True Love Spells: For Those Unjustly Separated By Time or Space_. “It can’t just be infatuation or lust. If he really loves you, it will work.”

“If I want it to,” he said.

“Which you…don’t,” she said.

“Fuck, no,” he said. “This is so much better. I wouldn’t go back if you paid me.”

“All right,” she said, but it sounded a little like she was humoring him, and he wondered why she didn’t believe him. Had she even met him? He decided to go hang out with Eliot and Arielle and his other self for a while. It was always really relaxing at their place.

*

He was actually very annoyed when he was pulled out of listening to Queen’s entire unreleased back catalogue, particularly because he had put himself on the waitlist to meet Freddie Mercury and if he was on earth when his number came up, he’d have to start over again.

“Nancy,” he said when he was summoned to her desk, “do we have dreams here? Like, do we sleep?”

“I don’t,” she said. “Perhaps you do, though I haven’t heard of it before. Here you are, love. Go see him.”

He arrived in the middle of the penthouse kitchen, standing in between Eliot and Margo. Margo was drinking what looked like a mimosa, but Eliot was staring miserably into a cup of coffee. Quentin hadn’t seen him drink at all during his spying sessions, now that he thought about it. Probably part of recovering from the stomach injury, he thought, but Eliot without alcohol made him feel a little weird.

“This is going to sound stupid,” Eliot began.

“Look at me,” Margo said, and Eliot looked up. “You have a free pass for stupid shit for like five years. You can say whatever stupid fucking thing you want and I won’t even think twice. Tell me.”

“I keep having dreams where Q tells me to try to…” Eliot put a hand in the air, waving it around while the other was on his hip, his face tight in frustration. “Resurrect him.”

“Okay,” Margo said. “On a scale of one to God telling Mary she’s about to live out every teenage girl’s late period nightmare, how vision-y are these dreams?”

“Pretty fucking vision-y,” Eliot said, rubbing his forehead. “He told me how the marmalade got onto the ceiling the other night, which, by the way, have I mentioned I had to clean marmalade off the ceiling?”

“Jesus,” Margo said. “We’re talking straight up pushing a baby out of your untouched vag into a horse trough here.”

“I guess so,” Eliot said. “But back to the marmalade, Bambi, sugar does not go there. Did you learn nothing from the great Monistat scavenger hunt of 2017?”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” she said, waving her hand. “We’ve got bigger problems now. Tell me about the fucking spell, come on.”

“He told me exactly how to do it and it’s not even that it’s hard, on the surface, but I have to give something of myself that I wouldn’t show to anyone else.” He sighed. “You know how I feel about that.”

“So either your dead boo is contacting you via dream so you can bring him back to life, or your subconscious is trying to help you process your emotions because you’re shitty at that when you’re awake,” Margo said. “Either way, you come out on top.”

“I didn’t even get into the dream sex,” Eliot said. “We’re basically fuck Olympians now. I’m ruined for anyone else. The good news is, I think he is too, so I don’t have to worry about him getting better dick from young hot Paul Newman, or old hot Paul Newman.”

“Middle aged hot Paul Newman, though. Still a threat?” Margo asked.

“Shit,” Eliot said. “Yes. I forgot about him.”

Margo got up from the bar stool, walked around the island, and put her arms around him. “What do you think? Is it time to bring a dude back from the dead?”

Eliot stared at nothing over her shoulder. “Bambi, I think I have to try it.”

“Well, all right,” Margo said. “Time to bring a dude back from the dead. Lay on, Macduff.”

*

“Absolutely fucking not,” Julia said. “No. No way.”

Quentin could have told Eliot that when Julia sounded like that, the discussion was done, but then, he could have told Julia that when Eliot sounded like that, the discussion was done. He was kind of glad he was dead right now, actually. There was no way he’d want to be caught in the middle of this, even though he kind of was the middle of this. He slid against the wall and had to remind himself that they couldn’t see him. Maybe if he stared into the fire and ignored them he’d be pulled back into his room, in his own personal Physical Cottage, listening to Queen in peace.

“Okay, I don’t think you understand. I wasn’t asking permission,” Eliot said. “I’m doing this, and I need some help gathering materials.”

“Eliot, no. What the fuck?” Julia grabbed the paper Eliot held in his hands and looked down at it, then ripped it in half. “I understand the temptation, but this is insane. You’re going to use magic you’ve never heard of before that came to you in a dream? Does that sound like a good idea?”

Eliot held up a hand and the two pieces of paper slipped out of her grasp and into his. “Okay, A. Not just dreams. Visions.”

“Which can be _lies_ ,” Julia said. That seemed to stop Eliot in the middle of working up to his argument, and he suddenly crumpled up the paper, tossed it into the fire, and reached out to grab Julia’s hands with the hand that wasn’t holding onto his cane like it was a battle axe.  

“I know they can,” he said. “I really do. I’m willing to take that chance.”

“I’m not willing to let you, though.” She squeezed hard. Quentin expected both of them to let go, because he could see her nails digging in, but they didn’t. “It’s not just that it could be dangerous, but even if it isn’t a trick…Eliot, you know what it would be like if you brought him back and it wasn’t really Q. Could you look at him every day and know that that’s his body, but the person you love isn’t there? I’ve done it. Q did it for months, and it destroyed him.”

Quentin watched Eliot’s face to see if it would waver or not. God, he hoped Julia’s reasoning would win out. Eliot could be practical once he saw the logic laid out before him, but even then sometimes impulse overrode everything else.

“These dreams, or visions, they’re too good to be true, right?”

Eliot closed his eyes. “Yes,” he whispered.

“Trust me,” Julia said. “Don’t do this. I miss him more than…fuck.”

They moved together almost at the same time, hugging each other tight. Quentin sighed, putting his hands over his face. He cried so much more now that he was dead than he had ever cried in life, and that was really fucking saying something.

“I can’t not do something,” Eliot said, resting his cheek on top of Julia’s head. “If there’s the tiniest chance…how could I not? He’d do it for me. He’d do it for you.”

“What if he’s not really Q, though?” Julia whispered. “You can’t, Eliot. Please don’t do it.”

“How’s this?” Eliot said after a moment. “I dream about him every night. Penny can bring you into my dream and you can talk to him.”

Julia lifted her head. “You dream about him every night?”

Eliot nodded.

“Does he…does he watch us? Does he see what we’re doing?”

“Yeah.” Eliot stared off into space, an intensely private, satisfied smile on his face. “He does.”

Julia pulled away from him and drew out her phone. “All right. I’m going to text Penny and see if he’s willing to do that.”

“Like he wouldn’t do anything you asked,” Eliot said.

“Well, I’d really like not to push that boundary,” she said.

“A little advice from someone who knows,” Eliot said, squeezing her shoulder before throwing a scarf around his neck and limping out of the apartment. “Don’t hold off. Push it, sister. Push it real good.”

*

“I’m not comfortable,” Penny said. “I’m extremely uncomfortable.”

“I can’t help what I dream,” Eliot said, waving his hand. “Let me enjoy myself.”

They were in the living room for once, and Quentin kept getting distracted by his own moans. Eliot was the only one who seemed unbothered by the fact that another version of him had another Quentin in the bedroom, with the door very much open. Sitting on the couch with his feet in Eliot’s lap made him about a thousand times more aware of Penny and Julia trying not to look at either of them.

“Um,” Quentin said, just as he heard the unmistakable sound of himself getting close to orgasm. The worst part was that he had a pretty good idea what they were up to and kind of wished he was in there too. “I…sorry, what were you saying?”

“I was saying I want to _leave_ ,” Penny said, scowling.

“Q, how am I supposed to know it’s really you?” Julia asked.

“Well,” he said. “This isn’t your dream. Ask me something Eliot and Penny wouldn’t know.”

She squinted at him for a second, then sat up straight. “Physics teacher, junior year.”

“Mr. Carr,” he said. “Permanent armpit stains. He always used to squeeze the girls’ shoulders like he was a coach giving you a pep talk or something.”

“I forgot about that part. Thanks for reminding me,” she said. “Okay. Say I believe you. How do you know this spell works?”

“It does exist. There’s a book called, uh.” He looked at Eliot, who raised his eyebrows. “Um, it’s called _True Love Spells: For Those Unjustly Separated By Time or Space._ ”

Penny gave an abrupt shout of laughter. “Jesus,” he said, staring at the ceiling and shaking his head.

“Yeah,” Quentin said. “It’s pretty well hidden. For obvious reasons. I only got the spell as kind of an unexpected gift. And Jules, I won’t come back as a monster or anything. It either works or it doesn’t. No halvesies.”

She threw her hands up. “All right. What do we have to do, then?”

“It’s mostly Eliot, because of the...the love thing,” he said. “You have to find something for my body, my mind, my soul, and my heart.”

“I think I’ve got the rest,” Eliot said, “everything but the mind.”

“Oh, that’s easy,” Julia said. “A coin.”

“Yes.” Eliot pointed at her. “Was he always a probability nerd?”

“ _Always_ ,” Julia said.

“Um, hey,” Quentin said. “It’s nice to know the odds of things.”

Eliot patted his foot with a little indulgent look. “Of course it is.”

Julia stood and pulled Quentin up so fast he stumbled. “Q,” she said, squeezing him into a hug. They both tightened their arms around each other until he had lifted her almost off the ground. “I hope this works. If it does, we’ll be the most boring people who ever lived for like a month. The most exciting thing we’ll do is go see a movie.”

“Jules, if it works, I might not leave this apartment until next year,” he said. “I’m just gonna eat and sleep and…”

They both looked toward the bedroom, which was quiet for the moment.

“Set up a lot of silencing wards,” he said.

“Look, both of you, I’ve got this,” Eliot said. “I’ll have to make a trip to Fillory for at least one thing, but we’re good. Penny, you may go now.”

“Thank fuck,” Penny said, putting his hand on Julia’s arm and disappearing.

*

And again, three songs into the back catalogue, he was summoned.

“There’s been a resurrection request,” Nancy said. Everything she wore, from the little cap atop her head to her earrings to the ring on her gloved finger, was an acidic yellowish green.

“Huh,” he said. “I guess he’s actually doing it.”

“Would you like to be resurrected?” Nancy asked.

“Do I get a choice?” he asked.

“Of course.” She looked up at him for the first time and he realized her eyes were nearly all pupil. For the briefest moment he thought he saw many, many more eyes, but the thought was gone before he had blinked again. “You always have a choice until you don’t, and even then there are options.”

“Well, I don’t want it,” he said. “Who would want to leave?”

“Plenty of people,” she said. “Are you sure? That man loves you, really quite an enormous amount.”

“I guess,” he said. “But no. No, I don’t want to be resurrected. I like it here.”

“So noted,” she said, and stamped the gold plate in front of her.

*

“I honestly thought you’d say yes,” Alice said. He was onto the Beach Boys now, and had told her that he definitely wanted to talk to her but could she talk to him while they listened? And maybe sometimes could they not talk at all?

“Why?” he asked, sitting up. She was cross-legged on the end of the bed, reading a book, in fuzzy flannel pants and a Princeton sweatshirt. That was one thing about this Alice—she’d stopped wearing the dresses and tight shirts and skirts he remembered her preferring, and was instead going in what he thought of as more of a day pajama direction. He understood; he was already deep into day pajama territory.

“You had a lot that you still wanted to do,” she said. “Julia’s there. There’s a lot to do in Fillory. Shit, Q, you wanted to have a family. Eliot’s there.”

He shrugged. “I think my priorities sort of changed,” he said. “This is better. Besides, I get to be with you.”

“Don’t get me wrong, I like having you here,” she said. “But I have to admit I wasn’t expecting you, and I really wasn’t expecting you to like it here so much. You hardly talk to Eliot, or even your son.”

“I don’t feel like I really know him,” he said. “He’s nice, but he’s not really my son, you know?”

“No,” she said. “I don’t. Q, I’ve been inside your dreams. You missed him so much.”

He shrugged again. “Maybe in my dreams I do. I don’t know. I just know that I don’t really feel awkward anymore except when I’m with him and Arielle and old Eliot, and even old me. It’s like…like I’m at a family reunion and I have to talk to my great-uncle that I met when I was two. I don’t remember him, but he remembers me, and there are pictures so everybody expects me to feel some kind of connection. But I don’t.”

He flopped back on the bed again just to feel it bounce comfortably under him. “God Only Knows” had just started to play and he wanted to bask in it. Alice knew how much he loved it and stayed quiet all the way through, but at the end, she patted his leg.

“Do you remember how, after the Monster told you Eliot was dead, you locked yourself in your room and wouldn’t come out for six hours?” she asked.

“Yeah,” he said after he’d thought about it for a few seconds.

“You screamed,” she said. “Not just for Eliot.”

“I know,” he said. “It was really bad for a while, but I think I just hit a wall or something. I had to stop caring so much at some point, I guess, or I would have exploded.”

“That doesn’t really sound like you,” she said in a strange, tight voice. He propped himself up on his elbows.

“Vix, come on,” he said, laughing. “You’re acting like I’ve got two heads.”

“I think you kind of do, actually,” she said, and in the same strange voice, she asked, “Q, do you love Eliot?”

“ _Yes_ ,” he said, closing his eyes to let it wash through him. That love—it felt like it came from everything around him, every joyful thing that had ever existed, funneled right into him and through him and he was on fire with it, absolutely beautifully on fire.

He shivered, shaking his head. His throat felt weird, like he was having an allergic reaction. “Did you say something?”

“I asked,” she said slowly, “if you love Eliot.”

“Of course,” he said. “My friends are basically my family. Well, maybe not Penny.”

“Shit,” Alice said. “Shit, Q. Fucking shit.”

“What?” He realized his face was wet, and wiped his eyes. “Am I crying? What’s going on?”

“Something is really wrong,” she said, grabbing his hand and dragging him from the room.

“But,” he said, glancing back at his record player.

This time the front door of the Physical Cottage opened onto a stone walkway that started off narrow and then gradually spread out and changed. One moment it was covered in cherry blossoms and the next they were on a bridge that spanned the narrow part of a lake. They went rapidly from afternoon to night, and the moon lit the way. He wanted to linger a little bit to enjoy it but Alice’s hand was firm, and he guessed he could look at it later. It wasn’t like he didn’t have time.

On the other side of the bridge, in a little copse of trees, was a hut with a surprisingly modern looking roof and door. Afterlife landscaping was really up to date, Quentin thought, and then looked up again to find that the hut had morphed into a tiny house.

“Butterfly,” Alice shouted, banging on the door.

“How do you know everyone?” Quentin mumbled.

“I’ve been dead a while, Quentin,” she snapped, and then shook herself. “Sorry. God.”

“It’s all right,” he said in a small voice. “I ask dumb questions sometimes.”

“No, it’s not all right,” she said, loosening her grip on his hand and rubbing his arm. “I’m still trying to figure out why I do that, but it’s not because of your questions. They are dumb sometimes, though.”

She turned to the door again and hammered on it. It opened this time to reveal a young, very fit woman in a bra and yoga pants, her hands on her hips.

“Oh,” Quentin said, not looking at her chest.

“Namaste,” she said, glaring at Alice. “I’m communing with my ex-boyfriend. What do you want?”

“I think I—well, a version of me—might have accidentally fucked up his timeline,” Alice said. “Can you check to make sure he’s the correct Quentin?”

“I swear to god, your timelines are all so fucked up that I don’t know how you had time to do anything but fuck up your timelines,” Butterfly said, but she stood aside and let Alice and Quentin into the little house.

Quentin had expected it to be bigger on the inside, but it was still tiny. He squeezed through the minuscule kitchen and into the living area, which was a little larger than a queen size bed. He knew this because there was a queen size Murphy bed flipped up into the wall. Swallowing, he tried not to knock anything over with his elbows.

“I flipped tiny houses when I was alive,” Butterfly said, watching him flatten himself against the wall and hyperventilate.

“That’s nice,” he managed to choke out.

“Yup,” she said with a thin smile. “I lived in a tree house, actually.”

She left him to digest that and pulled a tape measure from a drawer.

“Stand still,” she said, bending down to put the tip of the tape measure at his feet. “You can’t break this thing, but you’re making the entire house vibrate.”

Slowly, she dragged it up the length of his body. When it reached eye level he saw that it was made of thick stained glass, though the colors of the glass moved around as she worked.

“Shit. I’m right, aren’t I?” Alice said. She was petting a cat, and he had a small but nagging urge to protect the cat from her.

“You are,” Butterfly said. “He’s about seventy-five percent one Quentin Coldwater and twenty-five percent another. Not possessed. Split. Kind of like those bodies of water with different densities that meet and never mix.”

“Some of you is the actual Quentin and some of you is the Quentin from our first year, when we went to Brakebills South,” Alice said. Her mouth was twisted in dismay, and he realized he hadn’t seen her look like that at all since he’d arrived in the afterlife. 

“Something went wrong when we did the timeshare spell.” The memory was there, but so faded he could barely remember why they had gone to Brakebills South in the first place. There was Mayakovsky telling him what his discipline was, giving him the spell, and then Alice—a great wave of sadness for her—and then coming back to himself with Alice’s mouth against his. After that, everything was clear as day.

“Yes,” she said. “There wasn’t enough magic for that Alice to erase that Quentin’s memory. She pretended they were just doing something for Mayakovsky, but there’s a reason you needed to perform that spell. Something must have stayed with you when you switched back.”

“Huh,” he said. “Well, I’m still me. It’s not like I switched places with myself from another timeline or something.”

“No, Q,” she said. “Imagine if right now, half of you suddenly became your twelve-year-old self? Everything would be off. You’re not really you.”

He remembered himself at twelve: anxiety like an anvil on his chest, feeling like his clothes had been torn off every time he went outside his room and everyone was staring and laughing at him all the time, braces and glasses and pimples and nonstop uncontrollable boners, like every other kid, but unlike every other kid, he had also wet the bed on and off until high school. If he had ended up in hell after death, he was pretty sure it would have looked a lot like seventh grade.

“Okay,” he said. “I see what you mean. But I’m…like, I’m not that bad, am I?”

“No,” Alice said, softening. She pulled him close. He went happily, arms tight around her. It was a kind of comfort he couldn’t remember her ever offering him before, a kind that he liked—to be held like he was really cared for. He supposed neither of them had thought it was something the other wanted, and he was always a little too afraid to seek it out from her.

“Is this something that even needs to be fixed?” he asked. She released him, looking regretful, and nodded.

“Whatever decisions you’ve made after your death, it’s important that it was you making them,” she said. “If you had died in your first year at Brakebills, you would have made so many different choices, Q. So, so many things happened to you. I watched them all happen and I know, I _know_ you wouldn’t be making the same choices. I don’t even know if you would be dead.”

“I think I would,” he protested. “There’s no way I would have let you or Penny or anyone else do that. It was the only way.”

“Well, I guess that’s something we’ll never know, but I think you should at least get to exist as yourself now,” Alice said. “I wondered why you seemed like you weren’t really changing. Eliot knew it too—he knew there was something wrong.”

“ _Fine_ ,” he said, hunching his shoulders. “So there’s something wrong with me. How am I supposed to fix it?”

“Oh, that’s easy enough,” Butterfly said, making him jump. He wouldn’t have thought you could surprise anyone in a place this small, but he’d forgotten she was even there. She held the tape measure up against him again and gestured for Alice to hold onto it, then said, “All right, seventy-five percent wrong Quentin, adjust this.”

She took his index finger and pressed it against the red glass that indicated three-quarters of him, and he slid his finger down. As the red glass shrank, the blue glass, the twenty-five percent Quentin, rose.

It was a little like drinking the bottle of his feelings—but only a little. Then, he had gone from nothing inside, dry, untouched, perfectly smooth, to being a crumpled up, twisted, blood-hot human, full of pockets and deep caverns of emotion that he had never even known himself capable of feeling. It hurt, in a shocked, stomach punch sort of way. This didn’t really hurt, though it did remind him of having his blood drawn, that sickening drain toward the end. He swayed, wondering if he should have warned them that he tended to faint when he donated blood, but as soon as the lightheadedness appeared it went away, replaced by a feeling of concrete pouring into him. Whatever noise he made, both women backed away from him, and he realized his head was twitching and his eyes were rolled back. When the concrete feeling had passed and the entire tape measure was blue, he went boneless and dropped to his hands and knees, face pressed into the pine floor.

“Quentin,” Alice gasped, kneeling beside him, and he tried to speak but couldn’t.

Penny had said the bullshit of his life would begin to fall away and that he would start to become his real self over time, and he thought maybe it was all happening at once, a tearing away of his protective humanity until he was just Quentin Coldwater, ugly and raw and old but new. He clawed his fingernails into the wood without even knowing he was doing it, smelling pine and some kind of pleasant soap or oil, trying to gather himself together into a whole being and failing. He was spilled out all over the floor.

“Here,” Alice said, moving him until he was sitting. Her touch felt like sandpaper on a wound for a moment, but after that moment it was better, and then better still. He still felt like he might faint or vomit, if dead people could do either of those things, but he was…well, he _was_. He was Quentin.

“I just,” he choked out. “What the, what the _fuck_.”

“Um,” Alice said with a nervous glance at Butterfly. “I’m guessing you feel a little different.”

“What the fuck did I do?” he asked. “What the _fuck_ did I _do_ , Alice? What the fuck?”

“I would have expected you to be more coherent at a hundred percent than twenty-five,” Butterfly said. “I think you’ve lost some verbal skills over the years.”

“Which part are you what the fucking?” Alice asked. “Is it—dying?”

“Yeah, Alice,” he hissed. “It’s _fucking dying_.”

She pulled her arm from his shoulders, and he almost apologized, but he couldn’t—he couldn’t. “I’m so sorry, Q. If you and that Alice hadn’t…been together, I think it would have been just her in there with Penny. It wouldn’t have been you. You wouldn’t have died.”

He pushed his fists into his eyes and tried to breathe for a minute, tried to follow her logic even though it felt like it was taking a lot of energy to stay upright instead of curling up on the floor again. She sounded guilty, and while he wasn’t the same Quentin he’d been five minutes before, he also didn’t feel exactly the way he’d felt before the timeshare spells. That Quentin would have gotten up and walked away from Alice without any remorse at all, but he wasn’t that Quentin anymore either. He’d forgiven her, even without interference from his younger self. He cared about her, even without interference from his younger self.

“No,” he said. “I would rather have had it be me. I don’t regret saving anyone. But I don’t feel good about it either. The other me felt like…like I was headed toward it anyway and I might as well do something good on the way out, but _fuck_ , Alice. It was like I was seeing everything I’ve done, everything that’s happened to me, everything I’ve learned, like it was someone else’s life. He didn’t know _anything_ about what life could be like. No wonder he thought it was a good death, you know? No wonder I was so fucking lost about everything, about Fillory, about _Eliot_ —”

His voice cracked and he had to pinch his arm really hard to stop himself from crying.

“And I said no when they asked me if I wanted to be resurrected,” he said. “I had a chance to go back and I said no because I was still that fucking idiot. Jesus _fuck_.”

He couldn’t breathe. He leaned against the wall and tilted his head back onto it, gasping and rubbing his chest hard with the heel of his hand.

“Well,” Butterfly said, “do you think they only ask you once? Old Nancy’s asked if I want to be reincarnated or resurrected or possess someone at least seven times. If you haven’t noticed, it’s a bit of a free-for-all here.”

He scrambled up, hitting his head on the cabinet. Somehow he had migrated the three feet that separated the living area from the kitchen. “Ow,” he said, out of habit. “Okay, I have to talk to Nancy. I mean, how do you even get ahold of Them? I don’t know how this works. It’s always just, I don’t know, I’m playing poker with the 1973 Texas hold ’em champion and then I’m talking to Nancy.”

“I think it’s the same as everything else. You just walk through the door,” she said.

“Thanks,” he said, flying toward the door and then realizing he was being an asshole. “Thanks, Butterfly. God, thank you. Bye.”

*

“Hi, Nancy,” he said.

“Darling, what a pleasant surprise,” she said, not looking up.

“Um, hi,” he said. “Do you remember the other day…or whatever you call periods of time here? When I said I didn’t want to be resurrected?”

She set down her stamp and looked up at him for the second time. This time he saw—he _saw_.

“You’ve been corrected, haven’t you,” she said, but her voice was not exactly the voice he had heard before, and he heard it with more than his ears.

“Yes,” he said. “I know what to do now.”

“And you know what this means.”

He swallowed. “Yes.”

“You might not be back,” she said.

“I know,” he said. “But I’m not done. And I…I’d rather be able to touch him.”

She nodded, picking up a gold plate that she had set aside from the others. It had the word DECLINED stamped across it, and she took a little roller and smoothed it out, stamping it again with ACCEPTED.

“This will be your return ticket at the station,” she said, handing it to him.

“Thank you,” he said. “I hope you do get a vacation someday.”

“What if I told you this is my vacation?” she said.  

“Then I hope it’s everything you ever wanted,” he said. “Although I also hear Hawaii is nice.”

*

At the station, only Alice stayed with him. He had wanted it that way; he wasn’t sure he could see Eliot and Teddy and Arielle again without losing some of his resolve, and he was pretty sure he’d have to have all of his resolve for whatever was coming for him.

“I know they’ll get it,” he said, “but can you just tell them I’m glad I got to see them again and hopefully I’ll be back someday? And maybe they can visit me if they want?”

“I will,” Alice said. “Do you think you’ll forget everything when you’re human again?”

“I kind of want to,” he said. “But I don’t want to forget you. It was good to just be with you again, you know? I’m sorry I was still my old dumbass self most of the time.”

“For the record,” Alice said, nudging his shoulder, “I don’t think that dumbass was all that bad.”

“Me?” he said, and couldn’t help but smile. “I really was. We’re a great team when it comes to magic, and maybe even great friends someday, but not…not romantically. I thought we were. I did that thing where I imagined you into someone you’re not, and then got mad when you were just yourself.”

“I think I did the same thing to you. You were the first person who was ever really nice to me,” she said. “Not exactly the basis for true love, you know? But I know you now, after all this time. I like you the way you are.”

“I like you the way you are too,” he said. “You and the other Alice. If she still wants me in her life when I get back.”

Something in his voice made her glare at him. “Don’t you cock out on that conversation, Quentin,” she said, sounding so much like Margo that he stopped and stared at her. “I mean it. You tell her about the timeshare spells right away. Don’t do that to her again.”

“I wouldn’t,” he said, although he had a tiny suspicion that he might have tried to get around it somehow.

“Because she deserves to get over you,” Alice said. “It won’t take long. There’s someone else for her and she’s already on that path, but you coming back is going to throw things off for a while.”

“All _right_ ,” he said. “I don’t want her to feel pain any more than you do.”

“I know, Q. It’s just…you can be careless sometimes.”

He sighed. “Yeah. Eliot—in the other universe, I mean—one time he said I was so self-centered he was surprised my eyes didn’t point straight into my own asshole.”

Alice laughed, long and hard. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d made her laugh like that—years ago, maybe, if ever. “He wasn’t wrong.”

“No.” Quentin smiled. “He knows me. All the good shit, all the bad shit. Although I guess there’s new good and bad shit for him to learn.”

The train arrived, whipping cold wind over them as it rushed through, and he leaned in to kiss her cheek. “Goodbye, Alice.”

“I’ll see you soon, Q,” she said.

The little machine at the door ate his gold card when he offered it up, clicking from red to green. His last sight of the station was Alice turning her head to watch him go.

*

He thought he’d see Penny again when the train arrived. The doors opened on the library, but when he walked past the circulation desk, he saw Alice there. She was in a suit, her hair up, and even though he knew she saw him, it still seemed as though she looked through him. Or maybe that was the lighting. He looked even deader, somehow.

“Shit,” he said. “Alice, did I fuck this up? Did I get tricked into working for the library for eternity or something? Did you?”

“No,” she said. “I’m just here to help them out with some accounting.”

“This might sound weird,” he asked, “but which Alice are you?”

“I’m the Alice who watched you die a month ago and just read the rewrite of your book,” she said, and he realized the coolness that he’d assumed was anger was actually the kind of bone-deep, tired sadness he’d only ever seen from her when she talked about Charlie.

“So you know why I need to talk to you,” he said. “I was kind of hoping to do it in person, you know, post-resurrection, not in a dream.”

“This isn’t a dream.” She pointed to a sign behind her, which said ‘Dreamscapes strictly prohibited as they may affect the condition of the books.’

“Well, either way, I’m glad to see you,” he said.

“I know.” She put down the stack of books and sighed.

He felt a little embarrassed, shifting on his feet while she watched him with her eyebrows raised. Finally, just as he opened his mouth, she put up a hand.

“Like I said, I read your book. I know what you’re here to talk about, and I know about Eliot. I knew about Eliot before,” she said. “I knew you loved him. I would have even if I hadn’t read your book, but I thought, with the way you were acting, that you had decided to move on. To tell you the truth, I was so happy you didn’t hate me anymore that I didn’t even notice you weren’t acting like yourself.”

“No one did. I didn’t,” he said. “You couldn’t have known.”

“I should have,” she said. “I knew exactly what could happen if I didn’t wipe the younger you’s memory. I just convinced myself that I was somehow able to avoid it. And…it was really nice to have you like me again.”

“I still do,” he said. “You know, that part didn’t change back. I still care about you. I still want to be around you just because you’re you.”

“But you don’t love me,” she said.

“Not like that, no,” he said. “And I know you don’t love me like that either, not anymore. We can have something, though, something that’s better for both of us. Alice, this could be _good_.”

“I know,” she said, tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “Just…just give me some fucking time, all right? You just died and I only read the rewrite of your book like two days ago. I’m still kind of a mess.”

“Sorry,” he said. “I don’t mean to dump all this on you, not like this. I’ve just been spending so much time with you that I forgot for a second that you’re not the same person.”

“Was there another me?” she asked. “In the…whatever’s after this?”

“Yeah,” he said. “A branch of you. This wasn’t in my book? Should I even be telling you about it?”

“I don’t know,” she said with a small smile. “There’s nothing about the afterlife in your book, but we haven’t been struck by lightning yet, so I think we’re all right.”

“Well, that Alice reminded me that I can be a careless asshole, and I don’t want to be that person,” he said. “I really don’t want to be that person to you.”

“I guess I can appreciate that,” she said. “Especially since I’m the reason this happened in the first place.”

“You aren’t,” he said, and shook his head when it looked like she might protest. “I get that maybe you’re still on your apology tour, but you’re not at fault for everything. You can hold onto whatever other guilt you want to feel, but just…let go of this one, okay?”

She nodded slowly. “All right,” she said. “Go…get resurrected. Then come help me and Kady out here, because we’re going to need all the help we can get.”

“I promise I will,” he said. “Uh, did my book say how I’m supposed to get to Penny?”

“Just go through the door, Quentin,” she said.

“You know, one of these times I’m not going to ask, and I’ll end up walking through a door into a dragon’s mouth or something,” he said.

“Dragon’s mouth is down the hall,” she said. “You could always try knocking first.”

*

 Penny didn’t look surprised at all, and Quentin wondered if he had known the whole time.

“Return trip, huh?” he said, and Quentin nodded. “Good luck, man. I think you’ll have a different question for me the next time I see you.”

“I hope so.” He reached out for a hug, and Penny gave it to him so easily that he wished things were different. He wished he and Penny had always been able to have this, but then again, a million years wasn’t all that long in the scheme of things. Maybe they’d have it someday.

“I’ve got a message for Kady,” Penny said when he pulled away. He seemed nervous, which sat strangely on him now. “Can you tell her she’s got something beautiful ahead of her, but she needs to go after it?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Can you tell me what it is?”

“You know I can’t.” Penny smiled at him and gave him one last pat on the shoulder, and then he was being drawn back fast as if sucked into a wind tunnel, backward, backward. He was just going from startled and terrified to annoyed when it spit him out, and as the sky stopped spinning, he discovered he was on his back on the ground, surrounded by trees.

*

“All right,” Eliot said, and Quentin sat up like a shot. Had the resurrection already happened? The world was still a little over-vibrant, the connection between himself and all the things around him a little too strong for him to be alive again, and the ground underneath him wasn’t disturbed. He was still dead, but sitting in the middle of a circle that had been burned into the ground, if he wasn’t mistaken, thirteen times already. The trees were almost bare, but Eliot had cleared the circle of fallen leaves and left only the damp dirt. It smelled like wet leaves and just a bit of brimstone.

Eliot was behind him, pacing just outside the circle and looking agitated. He had run a hand through his hair until it stuck up wildly. Quentin followed every movement, lovesick: the way he twisted the ring around his finger, the way he tapped his lip, the way he stopped, stamped his foot, and then started pacing again. He wanted to watch it all, every tiny thing Eliot did or said or breathed. The sun was going down, though, and he really, really hoped Eliot would get a fucking move on.

“All right,” Eliot said again. He pulled out a little bundle from the inside pocket of his black coat, and set it down on a stump nearby, undoing it carefully. “Q, I have no idea if you’re hanging around being a creep, but if you are, shit’s about to go down. I have one coin. Julia says it’s a coin you liked, and I believe her, because it’s a coin and I know nothing.”

He set the coin in the area of the circle designated north.

“I have one tile from our mosaic in Fillory,” Eliot said, setting it in the east, and Quentin twisted around to look at it. It was a blue tile. He had claimed once that he hated those the least, and Eliot had told him he was ridiculous before confessing that he didn’t mind the red tiles. “I have the ashes from the bonfire we built after you died, and I had to track down a goddamn kitchen witch and trade a vial of your blood for what I hope to hell are not going to be kitchen witch/former High King of Fillory test tube babies.”

The ashes went in the south, and the blood in the west.

“I was originally going to use some of your hair, because I don’t know if you know this, but you shed like a cat. I thought it would be easy to grab your brush or something, but apparently there’s some kind of back alley deal going on with that penthouse. There is a housekeeper. There may be a housekeeping crew. I’m not sure. Regardless, they cleaned your—our—room. There isn’t a trace of you left, Q. I hope this works, because, um,” Eliot said. “I don’t think I know how to handle that.”

He stared at the center of the circle where Quentin was sitting, stared so hard that Quentin was suddenly certain he could see him and that this was all another dream. But he was looking at nothing, Quentin saw after a terrified moment. His face was tightening the way it did when he was about to cry and didn’t want to. He never wanted to; it was always such a dramatic fucking process, and Quentin had hated that as much as he hated whatever hurt Eliot enough to make him break. _Shedding a few tears isn’t going to kill you_ , he had snapped at him once, and the look Eliot gave him was enough to make him regret saying it for the rest of his life.

“Okay,” Eliot said, taking a deep, shaky breath. “Get your shit together. Okay. Here we go.”

He held up his hands.

“A solis ortu usque ad occasum, stet commorantus vita,” he said to the north, to the east, to the south, to the west. A quick flick of his fingers set the circle on fire, and he knelt outside of it, winding his fingers in tight, graceful movements. Quentin watched his hands, mesmerized by Eliot’s magic as always. He performed the entire thing four times, with a tiny additional tut for each cardinal direction, and then finally he pulled his fingers in a straight line from his palm outward, as if threading a needle through it.

The tug in Quentin’s stomach began then. “Shit,” he said, rolling to the ground, and he could hear Nancy’s voice in his ear. _Do you really want this? It's going to hurt so very much._  God, yes. He wanted nothing more, for eternity.

Eliot knelt watching the fire, so tense he was trembling. “I don’t know what to say,” he said. “I don’t think it’s a secret that I love you, or that I miss you, but I’ve never said it to anyone in this life. I…I really need you, Q, I don’t think I’ve ever said that either.”

The tug in Quentin’s stomach stayed, but nothing else happened, and he willed Eliot to figure it out. _Say something real_ , he begged, _say something you can’t say to another soul, only to me_.

“What else am I supposed to say?” Eliot shouted. He looked up at the sky. “I fucking love him. Give him back to me.”

The sun finished its descent, and Eliot’s entire body sagged to the ground, his face in his hands, pressed into the dirt and leaves. After a moment he put his arms over his head, hands tearing into his own hair.

“Q,” he said brokenly, muffled against the ground. “Jesus fucking Christ, please come back to me. I don’t care if you come back as a fucking frog, just please, _please_. It hurts to open my fucking eyes. Come back, Q. Please, please come back.”

He had disintegrated in death, which was lucky, Quentin thought. He had a frantic little nightmare thought about digging his way out of a grave somewhere and was glad it was just magic that had killed him, his own friendly magic, which seemed to give him a pat on the back even as it remade his nerves, his bones, his skin. There was the old broken wrist that hurt—it all hurt, as it knit together. It all hurt so fucking much, and he wanted to scream because it was wonderful. He hadn’t hurt in what felt like a decade, and it was good because it meant there was pleasure there too, greater than the pain. He couldn’t scream because he had no voice, and then he could scream, and he did. Vertebrae, spinal cord, electricity through each nerve all the way down until he was no longer paralyzed and was instead seizing up in agony, his legs becoming bone muscle nerves skin cramping and twitching, the bottoms of his feet too new and thin, like the skin under a blister. The worst of all was the slide of his nails growing, but that was the last of it—it was finished, and pain released him onto the cold ground, alive.

When he stopped screaming, Eliot scrambled over to him on hands and knees, hovering over him like he was afraid to touch.

“El,” he croaked. “Don’t be scared.”

“Oh my god,” Eliot breathed, touching his arm and giving that wild, joyful laugh Quentin loved. “You’re freezing. I just—all right, can you move?”

“Yeah,” he said, teeth chattering. “Fucking c-cold.”

“I know, I know. Here, let me,” Eliot said, gathering him up and into his lap in one swift move. “Oh shit. Don’t tell Margo I did that. I think I tore something. Come here, baby. Oh my god, _Q_.”

He clutched stiff, cold fingers in Eliot’s shirt and tried to hold on, but he was shivering too hard. Eliot twitched his hand and suddenly there was a blanket around him. It was his own blanket, he realized, the one he’d had since he was a little kid and always kept somewhere on his bed. The soft material had never thinned or needed mending, and it had always seemed to envelop his entire body the exact same amount no matter how big he got.

“Blanket,” he said.

“Yeah,” Eliot said, resting his head against Quentin’s and sniffling. “I didn’t think it was going to get this dirty. Sorry.”

He shook his head, wanting to tell him it was more than all right—Eliot had brought his fucking comfort blanket, for god’s sake, because he wanted Quentin to be surrounded by something familiar and well loved right away, and he knew exactly what that something should be—but he couldn’t make his lips form the words. They sat there for a while, Eliot holding him tight and rocking him until he seemed to realize what he was doing.

“I have so many questions that I don’t even know where to start,” he said, “but I guess the most pertinent one is whether you’re really Quentin.”

He smiled against the lapel of Eliot’s coat. “I’m really me. Not evil, I think.”

“Well,” Eliot said. “Who’s the president?”

“Don’t make me say it,” he groaned.

“Point to Coldwater,” Eliot said. “Favorite spell?”

“Fixing the bed.” He smiled again, and started to laugh when he cracked open one eye and saw Eliot staring down at him with that particular look that said he was right on the verge of remembering what Quentin was talking about. The moment recognition broke across his face, Quentin nodded.

“All right. Two points to Coldwater.” Eliot shifted his weight and Quentin stretched his legs, testing them out. Not bad. Same hairy old legs as always, and they seemed to work the same as before. “Now for the big one.”

“Hit me,” he said.

“Why did you come back?”

“That,” he said, struggling to sit up, “is a really long fucking story.”

He stood with some effort, holding onto Eliot’s hand even as Eliot held onto his cane, and looked around. It was different—everything looked so different now that he wasn’t dead. It was as if someone had put a dimmer on everything, from the colors to the smell of the earth to the sense he had had of being truly Quentin. There was a layer over him again already, but he didn’t mind. It was human. He was human again, and he had wanted it.

“I mean,” Eliot said, brushing the dirt from his trousers and his jacket. “Did you have unfinished business?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Being alive was unfinished.”

“Oh,” Eliot said. Quentin, watching his face, realized he had taken for granted being able to understand Eliot’s emotions just by looking at him. The human layer separated them again, and he hadn’t even known there was anything to separate. He thought Eliot seemed cautious, feeling his way through something Quentin didn’t quite get.

“And I wanted to tell you in person,” Quentin said, “that I would choose you too.”

Eliot’s shoulders dropped and there was no guessing what he felt now; he looked down at Quentin as if he had answered the most important question of his life. And Quentin guessed he had, actually.

“You _were_ stalking me,” he said softly, rubbing his thumb against Quentin’s chin.

“Of course I was,” Quentin said. “Seriously though, El. Did you think I wouldn’t come back for you?”

Eliot shook his head, lips pressed together tightly, but then he stopped and gave Quentin a tremulous smile. “No, I knew. I knew you would if you could.”

“I would,” he said, holding Eliot’s hand to his face and rubbing the knuckles against his cheek. “Even if I had to go through seventh grade a million times over and over to get here.”

Eliot dragged him into his arms like Quentin was part of his body and he needed him there to survive, and they stayed wrapped around each other there in the circle of trees for so long that the twilight faded and it was really night. Nothing like a night in the afterlife, nothing nearly as beautiful. It was painfully ordinary, and he loved it so much more.

“ _Did_ you have to go through seventh grade, though?” Eliot asked. His jacket was open, and he had pulled it around both of them. Quentin was warm all the way through—warm from Eliot’s body in front, his hands rubbing the silk of Eliot’s shirt over and over in remembered pleasure, and warm along his back because Eliot wouldn’t let him go. His feet were so cold they were almost numb, but he couldn’t find it in him to care.

“No,” he said. “Maybe. I can’t remember now. I think I’d feel a lot more lingering humiliation if seventh grade were involved though.”

“I was not as lucky. I spent a lot of time there,” Eliot said, and pulled out his cell phone. “Sorry—I have so many stories to tell you—but I have to text 23 so he can get us out of here before you get hypothermia.”

Penny appeared in about ten seconds. “Dude, this is the last time. I’m only doing this for you because he was dead,” he said. “Hey, Quentin. Glad you’re not dead. Please remind your boyfriend that I am not a friendly neighborhood taxicab.”

“I—” Quentin said, and they were gone.

*

There wasn’t really a party. They tried, or Margo and Josh tried, but Eliot couldn’t remain standing for very long, and Quentin, as he explained to Josh, felt like his entire body had been rebuilt from scratch, because it had.

(“Listen,” Josh asked him quietly while Margo was off on an alcohol run. “How much exactly did you see while you were under that invisibility cloak?”

“Too much, Josh,” he said. “Anywhere but the kitchen. Please.”)

He fully intended to let Eliot baby him for an absurdly long time and then do the same in return for as long as Eliot would let him—history indicated that that time would not exceed two hours—but they were in bed and falling asleep well before midnight.

“I’m really going to miss being able to make you come fifteen times in a row,” Eliot mumbled against his neck.

“I think once is kind of beyond me right now,” Quentin said. “But yeah, fifteen in a row, no cleanup? How did we give that up?”

“You were not here in the morning when I woke up,” Eliot said. “There was cleanup. But in answer to your question, I plan to drag it out for hours to make up for the lack of quantity.”

He smiled and pulled Eliot’s arm tighter around him. “I was serious when I said I wasn’t going anywhere until next year. You’ll have to pry me out of this bed with a crowbar.”

“I’m supposed to be resting for another four or five weeks, and I’m not certain but I think I’m driving everyone crazy,” Eliot said. “Half of the cake Josh made you was a thank you from Margo for distracting me.”

Quentin had just drifted off to sleep with the weight of Eliot around him, a little hope in the back of his mind that he might dream about his room in the Physical Cottage, listening to old records with Alice, when a rabbit plopped onto the bed beside his pillow.

“Send help. Library now,” it said.

“You know, I can’t even be mad,” Quentin said.

“It’s my fault,” Eliot said. “I tempted fate by using the word rest.”

“All right,” Quentin yawned. “Let’s go.”


End file.
